


where the long shadows grow

by couldaughter



Series: space manhattans [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Interdimensional Rips In Space And Time, M/M, Not Star Trek Generations Compliant, Reunions, Vulcan Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 04:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15878247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: Spock, he thinks, should be fine. So long as he still rejected the Science Academy, and didn’t get assigned there again, and isn’t on leave to visit his parents, and --Hisparents.“Oh, Spock,” says Jim, into his knees. “S'ti th'laktra.”He feels an echo in the back of his mind, endless sadness and grief.





	where the long shadows grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magaliiiii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magaliiiii/gifts).



The universe yawns open.

Jim opens his eyes.

He’s lying somewhere unfamiliar, an unfortunately familiar experience throughout his five-plus decades of existence, but it’s not uncomfortable, which ranks it above a significant percentage of those other times.

The ceiling is the standard grey bulkhead of more or less every ship he’s ever embarked with, although he’s heard through the grapevine that beige is about to be the new gunmetal grey. It smells vaguely of medbay, just enough that he’s fairly sure a doctor’s been through while he was unconscious.

He turns his head to assess further and is surprised by a wave of pain centred in the back of his skull.

“Ow,” he says, just for something to do. “I mean, _ow_.”

He’s very experienced with head injuries and while this one doesn’t feel too bad - no double vision, no Bones hovering with some terrible blinking device to shout at him about potential brain damage - they still always hurt like an absolute bitch.

“Awake then, are we?”

Jim startles at the voice, barely keeps himself from reaching for a phaser he hasn’t regularly carried in years.

“Just about,” he says cautiously. There’s no real point in feigning sleep in these situations - his captors have historically been more annoyed by it, and his ribs could probably do with a break from being kicked. They’re at a record streak of fourteen months, the longest since he was twelve years old.

He pushes himself into a sitting position with some effort, and the lights kick up by another ten or fifteen percent. They’d been on reserve power, he thinks, but the sound of them changes, more intense, and the fluorescent buzz increases. He was correct in his assessment that he’s not in a medbay; the room closely resembles his second or third bunk, when he was senior enough for a private room but nowhere near senior enough for a potted plant.

There are no Earth-style prison bars anywhere in sight, which is a relief.

“That’s not a great idea,” says the voice - attached, he can now see, to a mid-thirties medical officer with tightly braided hair and dark brown skin. They’re wearing the much maligned neuter uniform with a pair of dark green tights. “We spent a good while making sure all your bones were in the right place, I’d hate to see our hard work wasted.”

“Right,” says Jim. He must have been out for a long time; he can’t feel any residual aches besides the one in his head. His mouth feels like a tribble crawled in and died along with fifteen of its offspring. “What year is it?”

He asks it with a smile, easy and unforced, but only because he’s had years of practice. Perhaps the doctor will think it’s a joke, but he’d really like to be reassured.

He’s got appointments to keep back at home.

“2258,” says the doctor. “Stardate is a bit iffy while they work on the notation system, but the year is Federation standard at least.”

“Alright,” says Jim. This is bad news, but not, perhaps, the worst possible news. He looks down at his chest and is deeply reassured by the lack of gold lamé and sashes. “That’s -- good.”

He’d been twenty five years old last time he was in 2258, halfway through the academy track and still ducking his head every time he saw a pretty face. Practically a baby, really, in hindsight.

“We picked you up floating in an escape pod out by the Sokolov system,” the doctor says, in a helpful tone. It’s not very helpful to Jim, the designation unfamiliar. “You’re onboard the USS Everest, we’re a research vessel. We’re banking that you come in peace.”

Jim smiled at that. “It’s been a long time since I did anything but,” he says, with some irony. “May I ask my rescuer’s name?”

“Of course,” says the doctor. “Doctor Talsul, deputy chief medical officer. The chief is off shift at the moment; you were in surgery for several hours.”

They flick their fingers along with the name in a way Jim recognises belatedly as a pronoun indicator. Neutral, he thinks, although he’s a little out of practice.

“Right,” he says. There’s something unreal about waking up from surgery even when he’s _not_ time displaced.

There’s no accompanying memory sickness, either, the unpleasant feeling of new memories being formed however many years past in his personal timeline. He should probably avoid meeting his former self, not least because it’ll leave him feeling really, deeply embarrassed.

He looks down at his chest again. He’s wearing a standard issue patient’s gown, he thinks. There’s a rather charming pattern of miniature Starfleet symbols printed on it, rather than the plain blue he remembers from his last trip to the medbay. There won’t be any scarring if the dermal regenerator has done its work, which only gets more unnerving the older Jim gets.

With a sigh, he glances to his other side. There’s a porthole, improbably, showing the encroaching wash of stars against the hull. “I appreciate that you’ve so kindly rescued me from asphyxiation, decompression or plain old starvation.”

Dr Talsul huffs a laugh at that, before remembering that xe’s supposed to look disapproving. It reminds him of Bones. “You’re welcome. And, just so we’re even - who exactly is it we’ve rescued?”

Jim freezes, just for a moment. It occurs to him that while his first name is fairly common, his last name might be an issue. His father is still a higher up in Starfleet after all, if he remembers rightly. Possibly he’s just retired back to Riverside. It was a tiring year, 2258.

“Jim,” he says, after a pause that probably gave away most of the game. “Jim Hawkins.”

Hopefully Dr Talsul hasn’t read any Stevenson. Or seen the adaptation with the puppets.

“Nice to meet you, Jim Hawkins,” they said. “Any relatives we can contact for you?”

“No,” said Jim. “No, I don’t think so.”

 

* * *

 

The USS Everest makes port at Deneva a week after Jim wakes up; a week he mostly spent asleep, ironically, because for all that the surgery fixed him up it certainly depleted his energy levels. He’s not at the bounce back age any more; hasn’t been for longer than he’d like to admit.

“Oh,” he says, when Dr Talsul informs him of their heading. “My brother used to live on Deneva.” It’s been decades since he died, from Jim’s point of view, but his memories of his one visit to the colony are still sharp.

“Hmmm,” says Dr Talsul. Xe’s been saying that a lot, mostly when Jim slips up and mentions something that definitely hasn’t happened yet. Sometimes he doesn’t even have to say anything to provoke xem into it.

He really wants to avoid yet another meeting with the Temporal Bureau. The paperwork buried his desk for most of that first five year mission.

“I haven’t been in a long time,” says Jim, because he doesn’t know when to quit. “How long has it been colonised, now?”

“It’s been _settled_ for about fifty years,” replies Talsul. “But Starfleet’s only recently increased its presence there. There are rumours of unrest, I think.”

Colonies never seem to have much luck around the Kirks. Jim wonders whether he could write a paper about it, just for his own amusement.

Probably there’s not enough empirical evidence. He tries not to imagine Spock saying just that, and smiles anyway.

“What will you do, once you leave?” Xe asks, presumably because Jim has completely failed to converse like a normal sentient being.

He shrugs. “I’ll find somewhere to be,” he says. “I think I’ve had my fill of Starfleet for one lifetime.” And the reverse, he adds privately, is certainly not true. Best to avoid it for now.

Talsul gives him a sympathetic look. Xe is, as Jim has learned over the last week, significantly older than xe seems, with xir smooth dark skin and sure hands. If he was thirty years younger, and somewhat less devoted, there might have been a spark of something.

Perhaps it’s best there wasn’t.

“Thank you for all your help,” he says, later, as he hefts a pack over his shoulder. His outfit is a replicator standard pattern in olive green and black, the last Starfleet echo of 20th century militarism.

“You’re welcome, Jim Hawkins,” xe replies, with a similarly 20th century salute. It makes Jim think fondly of the holos his dad watched with him when he wasn’t on mission or at some stuffy officer party.

Jim never grew to like those parties any more than he did when he was being dragged around them as a moderate child prodigy, well past his bedtime and even further past dinner. _At least I won’t have to go to any now_ , he thinks. _Wherever the other Jim Kirk is right now, better him than me._

When Jim unearthed a PADD from a surplus equipment store (read: junk box) onboard the Everest, Talsul had immediately programmed xir contact information into the internal memory. The rest of the crew was slow to interact with him, out of a misplaced sense of fear, Jim thinks, but xe never had that problem.

Possibly as a result of actually _talking_ to him. That sort of tactical thinking could really work wonders.

“Just in case you have any questions,” xe had said, “About this part of the quadrant.” Xe had given Jim a significant look and winked in a way which suggested even more layers of meaning.

He thinks of Talsul as a friend, or as close as xe can be to one when xe doesn’t know his real name. There are a few too many layers of artifice to the whole ordeal.

He really isn’t very good at hiding the Man Out Of Time thing, but he’s at peace with that. He’s halfway through his fifties and looks fairly non-threatening. It’s unlikely any of this timeline’s Klingons will take against him, at least on a personal level, and other Federation members will dismiss him, hopefully.

Staying under the radar is his best hope of figuring out what the hell is going on.

He looked up Sam as soon as he got his hands on the PADD, of course, more to satisfy curiosity than out of a desire to confront his big brother with the reality of time travel several decades before it became more than a very occasional phenomenon.

The last time he’d really wished Sam was still alive had been just after the whales. Sam would’ve got a real kick out of that story, Jim was very sure.

He wanders into the streets of Deneva with much the same lack of intent. There’s much less of it than he remembers, only a few blocks’ worth of houses and a number of official-looking buildings, but the spaceport is a decent size with regular transport available to more or less every corner of the galaxy.

Not that the galaxy has corners, Jim’s mind informs him in familiar tones. A typically illogical human aphorism.

He really misses that sort of conversation, he thinks as he continues to wander. It’s late at night, locally, and the market is closed. The streetlamps are dark, to conserve energy.

After a while he finds himself on a hill just outside the settlement, overlooking the vast expanse of jungle yet to be cleared out and, if memory serves, turned into yet more housing for Starfleet officers, families, and a dangerous infestation of manta ray aliens.

He lays down on his back, heedless of the dust, and looks up at the sky. The stars, at least, seem familiar, even though they’re technically completely different. He’s always found a lot of comfort in stargazing - just as he once said, he only works in outer space. He still finds the idea of the infinite expanse of the Alpha Quadrant exhilarating and terrifying by turn, even after decades spent exploring the far reaches of it.

The lack of light pollution means the sky is bright and alluring, reminiscent of long nights spent lying in the cornfields of the farm in Riverside, watching meteor showers with Sam or learning constellations from mom and dad on nights he couldn’t sleep.

His back starts to hurt. The air grows colder as the sun-warmed stone slowly cools.

“Nothing lasts forever, huh,” says Jim, to himself. He’d say it to the sky but his ego isn’t quite inflated enough to believe it would listen, no matter what Bones might have to say on the matter.

Eventually he returns to the spaceport, the only building still open so late, and idly connects his PADD to the local network uplink. The system is much easier than he remembers it being, the interface a little more intuitive, and the response time is impressive.

The feed takes longer to load than he’s used to, a comforting reminder that not everything is different about this version of 2258, and he’s still thinking about that comparison when a holo of Vulcan loads onto the screen.

Or at least, a holo of what’s left of Vulcan.

It looks like an asteroid field, now, but he’d recognise the nearby stars anywhere.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, and then he has to sit down and put his head between his knees and try not to think about anything for quite a while.

The port is mostly empty, given that it’s midnight local time, but a concerned steward comes by and leaves him a glass of water while he’s still struggling to breathe.

“This is a nice place,” Jim said once, a very long way away and a long time in the future, looking out across the desert vista outside their bedroom window. “Lotsa potential. Hot summers, cool evenings. Good company.”

He’d smiled, he remembers clearly, and he remembers that because Spock smiled back, not the manic kind of smile that he got on coming back from the dead, or the smirk he sometimes got on the bridge of the Enterprise. A real smile, that showed something softer than surprise or amusement.

Spock had said something back and reached out for him, across the matted floor of the room, taken a step closer. The memory was far enough away now that Jim couldn’t remember the exact tone of his voice, or the specific words, but he knew what Spock had meant by them, either way.

Now he wouldn’t see the red desert sands again, or watch sun rise behind the tall spires of Shi-Kahr, or look up into that familiar moonless sky.

He knew a lot of Vulcans, by the time he took what turned out to be his final Starfleet mission. It was supposed to be a standard escort mission - escorting him, in fact, to the Babel conference - and when they’d run into trouble he’d almost felt relieved.

Interplanetary travel was boring enough without Spock there; having to do it without any mishaps or detours would have been completely intolerable.

And then the ship’s hull had ruptured, and he’d been pushed into an escape pod, and the strange spatial anomaly had rippled and torn and - the universe yawned open wide before him.

He hadn’t told Talsul about that part of it. Not least because he didn’t think he could bear trying to describe it in anything approaching detail.

How could any temporally bound being expect to describe the raw innards of the universe? It would be madness to even attempt it.

Now all those Vulcans were likely dead, in this timeline, and none of them would exist in thirty years’ time to make allegedly completely neutral comments on the state of Jim’s uniform, or the odd relationship he had with his former first officer, or the fact that he seemed to spend more time on Vulcan than Earth, these days.

He is only now realising how much he enjoyed all of that.

Spock, he thinks, should be fine. So long as he still rejected the Science Academy, and didn’t get assigned there again, and isn’t on leave to visit his parents, and --

His _parents_.

“Oh, Spock,” says Jim, into his knees. “S'ti th'laktra.”

He feels an echo in the back of his mind, endless sadness and grief. The hit to the back of his head had taken a while to heal, and now - well, now it seems that everything in him is back online.

Even if it _logically_ shouldn’t be.

Wishful thinking, perhaps. The bond is always a little less concrete for Jim, when he isn’t touching Spock’s skin directly. Was less concrete. Wasn’t touching.

The tenses are the worst thing about being stuck in the past, Jim thinks. Besides the obvious.

 

* * *

 

There’s already a New Vulcan, Jim discovers a few minutes after he regains the ability to breathe. Half an hour after that he’s on a transport headed towards it, a short notice route arranged specially for the few Vulcans stationed at a remote mining research post on the opposite side of the planet.

Jim keeps to himself on board. He may not have independent telepathy, but basic human empathy lets him know that the other travellers would prefer he leave them be.

The ship is much too large for all of them to accidentally run into each other - there weren’t many Vulcans off planet, at the time. Not something to be thankful for, really.

There’s a room for each of them, although Jim suspects that the Vulcans may be sharing a common area, rather than taking separate quarters.

“Organisational efforts are being spearheaded by kevet-dutar Sarek and tela’at Soval,” Jim reads, later. His Vulcan has always been decent, much improved by long association with Spock, but he still has to sound things out from time to time. “Swift progress has been made and accommodation for several thousand refugees has already been constructed.”

Several thousand.

The tragedy comes in waves, Jim thinks, like most tragedies do. The first one crests highest, but the accumulation of later, smaller ones hurts more. Topples all the half-finished defenses you’ve managed to build.

His dreams, when he manages to sleep, are full of red sand and the glitter of unlikely rain in the light of the sun.

Further articles have been published by the time Jim wakes again, a few hours into the ship’s approximation of daylight, and he spends the time they’re at warp reading through them. He gets a chicken sandwich from the replicator out of habit, but he barely eats half of it before he has to push it away.

VULCAN RELIEF EFFORTS SLOWED, begins the first item on his news list. DISASTER ON NEW VULCAN! reads another, further down and yet in a significantly larger font size. Jim fiddles with the settings on his PADD until the article disappears from view.

Spock, he thinks, would be very unimpressed with the news coverage of his home planet. There’s a distressing lack of emotion in the Federation reporting, and a distressing flood of it in the responses coming from Vulcan news sources.

Take the RELIEF EFFORTS SLOWED article for an example. _Sources today learned that the Federation’s promised aid will arrive significantly later than projections had previously indicated, perhaps leading to an increase in risk of disease and injury on the barely established New Vulcan colony. Tela’at T’Pau indicated that this unfortunate delay was ‘indicative of current Federation trends,’ but did not elaborate further._

Hypotheticals, a lack of statistics, the use of adverbs - Jim could almost feel the author’s emotional imbalance bleeding from the screen of his PADD.

News of T’Pau was a relief, at least. He’d liked the woman, despite the circumstances of their meeting. Spock related, much later, the events that occurred after Jim’s own ‘death’, and T’Pau’s sympathy had surprised Jim enough that the next time he’d seen her, at a diplomatic party in Shi-Kahr, he’d made sure to pay his respects.

“If I tell Starfleet I’m from the future they’ll lose their damn minds,” Jim says, mostly to himself. A plan is mostly formed in his mind, the seed planted while he recuperated under Talsul’s watchful eye. “But if I tell someone on Vulcan - well, they might think I’m crazy, but they’ll try and logic me out of it. Much better than being shut up in a medical bay somewhere while the Temporal Bureau gets called.”

Part of his mind relaxes at the thought. Satisfaction at having a plan, possibly, or at having a definite destination at least.

He lays back on the bunk, rests the PADD on his chest. The ceiling is the same gunmetal grey as every other ceiling he’s yet encountered on a spaceship, and there’s no window out to the stars. The only way to know where he is right now would be to jettison himself from the airlock, an option he tries not to contemplate too deeply. There are no escape pods on this ship; he checked when he first got on board.

It’s an old ship, a model now usually decommissioned for age. If he closes his eyes he thinks he can hear creaking as hyperspace strains against the hull.

Sometimes Jim doesn’t understand how anybody managed to stabilise space travel. He’s no more than ten feet from a vacuum right now. There are only two decks. The bridge is old and cramped enough that the navigation officer has to share her chair with the helmsman.

It takes another four hours to reach New Vulcan, and Jim is awake for all of them.

 

* * *

 

The sand is golden brown, here. The sun is too young, the heat just as intense but the light very wrong.

Jim stands just to the side of the dock and takes a few deep breaths. The gravity is almost the same, he thinks, as he feels his spine compress in a way he now finds comforting instead of uncomfortable.

There may be something very wrong with his brain. Bones implies it often enough, although Jim supposes he won’t be able to imply it anymore. He shuts his eyes against a sudden stab of grief.

He gets the feeling that it might be a common occurrence. He’s still finding his feet, now, but once he finds somewhere safe enough to feel everything that’s building up in his chest - perhaps it’s best to keep that for another day.

Spock tried to teach him how to shield, a few times, but Jim is just not very good at it - in frustration, Spock once accused him of leaking emotions all over the floor of whatever room they were in, like puddles that splashed unwanted feelings into Spock’s mind.

That was before the bond, when Spock had little say in whether he knew what Jim was feeling at any one time. And vice versa.

Jim closes his eyes and sighs. He’s been avoiding thinking about the other side of his bond - something empty and wide open, from the way it feels currently. His Spock is still alive, assuming Jim has jumped universes or timelines or whatever, but distance always affected them much more strongly than bonded Vulcans - there were threats of a paper being written, at one point.

There’s no real way to tell what will happen to the bond now - whether it will sever suddenly, or fade so slowly Jim barely notices until it’s already gone.

A Vulcan steward eventually comes over to him, after Jim’s been stood in the open sunlight like an idiot for far too long.

“Dif-tor heh smusma,” says the Vulcan. “I am T’Mal. What is your purpose on New Vulcan?” She gives him a look which Jim might have taken offense at from a human - one that says, quite plainly, ‘you don’t belong here.’

He flashes the ta’al at T’Mal with a tired smile. “Sochya eh dif,” he says politely. “I’m Jim Hawkins. I seek an audience with T’Pau.”

His accent may be atrocious but his use of Vulcan seems to impress T’Mal. “Come into the shade,” she says, beckoning him across the sand, “And I will see what can be arranged.”

T’Mal is not quite the prototypical Vulcan, Jim thinks as she walks away. Her long hair is twisted into an elaborate bun, revealing several earrings running from the pointed tip of her left ear down to the lobe. Her overalls are practical, clearly a protection from the harsh sun, but not remotely similar to the traditional robes Jim can see the majority of the other Vulcans in the settlement are wearing.

He likes her immediately. He hopes she’s in some position of influence; she might do a few notable parts of Vulcan society some good.

There is a large cave entrance near to the settlement; T’Mal disappears into it, presumably in search of Jim’s audience.

The arrangements seem to take a very long time; the sun moves lazily across the sky while Jim sits thankfully in the shade cast by a large boulder.

What he can see of the settlement impresses him; it’s been only a month or so since the destruction of Vulcan, and the architecture here is already of a far more permanent nature than he would have expected. There are none of the prefabricated shelters or hastily built huts he remembers from news coverage of other refugee encampments - this is almost like a town already, with construction visible in the distance and homes already built from golden brown clay, fired by the sun.

The sun is halfway below the horizon by the time T’Mal returns. She seems unaffected by the heat and encroaching sand, expression perfectly neutral.

 _She’s good_ , Jim thinks. _Almost too good._

“Tela’at T’Pau has agreed to an audience,” says T’Mal. “She has been in a meeting these past hours with kevet-dutar Sarek, and has a few minutes before she is due to discuss restoration efforts with another advisor.” She reaches out as if to grab Jim’s elbow, pauses, and blinks.

“We must hurry,” she says, unnecessarily, and returns to the cave, walking much more swiftly. Jim scrambles to follow her, his heels skidding in the sand.

The cave is an entrance to an entire system of tunnels. Jim looks up in awe at stalactites hanging from a cave roof at least fifty feet above them, lit by emergency flood lamps and glittering with condensation.

 _At least there’s water on this planet_ , thinks Jim. So few uninhabited Class M planets, so little time to choose.

New Vulcan is a small planet, in a solar system of five. It has four moons, yet to be named, and a sky the colour of barely cooked caramel.

It’s certainly a change of pace.

T’Mal leads him through the tunnels with surprising ease, and stops after only a few minutes of walking. “Tela’at T’Pau is expecting you. Be honest and you may earn her respect.”

“I wasn’t intending to do otherwise,” says Jim, forgetting to modulate his tone.

T’Mal raises an eyebrow. It makes Jim’s breath catch, just for a moment. “Of course not, _Jim Hawkins_.”

She’s got Jim there.

“Thank you for your help,” says Jim. “I know it can’t have been easy.”

“You have made my day interesting,” says T’Mal. “I thank you for that, despite obstacles.”

She turns and leaves, heavy boots making her footsteps echo.

The chamber Jim enters is smaller than he expected, dimly lit and perhaps thirty feet in diameter.

T’Pau sits at a conference table in the center of the chamber, one clearly transplanted straight from a Federation ship. It may even have been put there by transporter, Jim thinks, eyeing the displacement patterns in the dust.

He makes the ta’al again and moves to stand across the table from T’Pau. “Tela’at T’Pau,” he begins, forgoing the traditional greeting. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“Sit,” says T’Pau. Jim sits. She’s always had that sort of voice. He’s glad to see it’s a universal constant. “What brings you to New Vulcan, Jim Hawkins?”

“It’s a long story,” says Jim. “The shortest version is that I’ve lost someone.”

“Not an uncommon story,” says T’Pau. “Perhaps you would have been better served at a Federation aid post, rather than intruding on our newborn world.”

Jim winces. “Ni'droi'ik nar-tor,” he says. “I had reasons for my choice, but they are not necessarily… logical.”

T’Pau narrows her eyes. “Explain them, then. And I hope you will explain them well.”

Spock would know exactly what to say, Jim is sure of that.

“Well,” he says, and then he pauses.

Something is happening inside his head.

He turns, without thinking, toward the door.

“I am unsure what you hope to achieve,” says T’Pau. “By disregarding my instructions.”

Jim puts a hand to his face. His thoughts are turning inside out. “I’m very sorry,” he mumbles. “I think --”

A shadow shifts in the doorway.

“Tela’at Soval,” says T’Pau. “If you could escort this man out of Heya’faul and --”

Jim grinds his palm into his forehead. His eyes are only half open when Spock appears in front of him.

“Jim,” says Spock. He’s looking at a ghost.

Jim blinks at him. “Spock,” he says. “Spock, what --”

Before he can finish the question - before he can even figure out what question he was going to lead with - Spock’s gone.

He turns back to T’Pau. “Does that -- explain anything?”

“More than you might think,” says T’Pau. “Go and find him. He has caused much -- turmoil, these past weeks.”

 _Classical Vulcan for ‘emotional havoc’_ , Jim thinks.

“Thank you,” he says, and runs.

 

* * *

 

The way out of the caves - Heya’faul, Jim assumes - is difficult to navigate without help. He loses his way several times, gets his sleeve caught on a stalagmite and then uses the scrap of cloth left behind as a trail marker.

It takes him at least three times longer to exit the cave mouth than it did for T’Mal to lead him down. It’s dark outside when he emerges, the sun dipped fully below the horizon and the moon and stars shining dimly behind clouds of dust.

Jim pulls a spare shirt from his pack and ties it around his mouth. The last thing he needs now is a lung condition.

“T’Mal!” He shouts, waving an arm when he spots the Vulcan woman lounging against one of the clay houses. She turns towards him, raises her eyebrows once more.

“Jim Hawkins,” she says, greeting him with a human-style wave. “What problem assails you?”

He pulls down his makeshift mask, the fabric cool on his neck. “I need to find someone,” he says. “T’Pau insisted on it, in fact.” That may be stretching the truth a little, but needs must.

“Alright,” says T’Mal. “Who is it you need to find?”

“He goes by Soval here, I think,” says Jim. “I know him by a different name, though. I don’t know whether that’s common knowledge here or not.”

“Oh, the old ambassador,” says T’Mal. “Yes, he came by a few minutes ago. He seemed much the same as usual, although that’s not saying much.”

Jim wants, more than anything, to roll his eyes. “That does sound like him,” he says, trying not to sound too desperately fond. His head still feels strange, something twisting inside his mind that ought not to belong there and yet, somehow, does.

“He lives at the far end of the settlement,” T’Mal says, pointing down the wide road they’re stood on to a small clay building, roughly cut. “Take care on your way across -- the native lizards are vicious.”

“Vulcan seems to have bad luck with that,” says Jim. “Thank you. I’ll watch my ankles.”

“Best of luck,” says T’Mal, in Standard.

“It’s Kirk, by the way,” he says, turning on his heel. “James T Kirk.”

T’Mal looks genuinely shocked for half a second. Jim smiles, and hurries across the road.

No lizards bite at his ankles, although he spots a few scurrying between potholes. They’re much smaller than the ones he remembers from Vulcan.

Spock’s front door is open, the curtain swept aside. Jim can see him silhouetted against a side wall, the room awash in candlelight.

It feels appropriate, somehow. He makes his way across carefully, watching his feet.

The house was clearly built on a hill - despite being on a level, the back wall opens to a small balcony. Jim can see Spock through the doorway, the long line of his back ramrod straight, his shoulders drawn up.

Jim can’t bear to look at him like that for long.

He steps out onto the balcony, rests his elbows on the retaining wall. The desert stretches to the horizon, chocolate brown and shining dimly in the moonlight. The stars are different, yet again, no trace of _Yel-tasu_ or _Hassu_ in the dust-filled sky.

"Our view was always much nicer than this," he says, resting a careful hand beside Spock's. "I suppose I could get used to it, though."

Spock turns his head, the lines on his face deeper than Jim has ever seen them, his profile still as alien and as lovely as it was the day they first sailed out into the great unknown. " _Jim_ ," he says. It's clear he can't quite bring himself to ask the question in his eyes.

"Yes, Spock?" Jim inches closer, thinks of the thousands of times their hands have touched, the very first and the very last, after V'Ger and before that last fateful trip to Babel.

Spock rests his left hand on Jim's right. The skin of his palm is paper and ink, perhaps, the story of decades that Jim will never claim back for them. Jim can feel Spock inside his head, now. "If this is not real," says Spock. "I would prefer that you did not say so."

"Don't worry, Spock," says Jim. "If this wasn't real, I'm sure we'd already be halfway to bed." He smiles, doesn't smirk. "Aren't you going to raise an eyebrow for me? I've missed your silence as much as I've missed everything else about you."

These months without Spock - first in one universe, and then in another - have stripped Jim down to fundamental honesty, it turns out. It suits him, although he's not sure how long it might last. He's willing to keep it up so long as it keeps Spock looking at him in this way, like he's the solution to something and a hundred new problems arising all at once.

Jim can feel everything Spock is feeling, flooding his thoughts and bringing the sting of tears to his eyes. It’s overwhelming. It’s perfect. He’s missed him so goddamn much.

Spock closes his fingers around Jim’s, lifts Jim’s hand to his chest. “Jim,” he says. He sounds halfway to tears himself, and Jim doesn’t think he’s ashamed of it. “Jim, there is much I have to tell you.”

“I think it can wait,” says Jim. He lifts his other hand and turns, presses it to Spock’s side, feels his heart beating. “Just for one night.”

“In the morning, then,” says Spock. He pulls Jim towards him, his free hand on Jim’s waist. He rests his cheek against Jim’s temple, inhales deeply. “ _Ashayam_ ,” he says, quietly. “It’s been a very long time.”

Some raw and terrible blooms in Jim’s mind, there and gone in a moment.

“Longer for you, then?” Jim knows the answer before he asks, but -- perhaps it’s important that Spock chooses to tell him. Perhaps that’s the most important thing.

“Much longer,” says Spock. The hand still holding Jim’s clutches tighter, failing to hide a tremor. “Much, much longer.”

The stars cast long shadows of monoliths on the desert sand, as they once did on Vulcan. Jim remembers standing with Spock just like this, a hundred or a thousand times, watching them shift alone with the dunes.

Perhaps there are a few things that remain constant across universes. The sand, and the stars, and them.

**Author's Note:**

> Vulcan Translations (sources: VLI, VLD, and also a literal Vulcan M*A*S*H Glossary):
> 
> S'ti th'laktra: I grieve with thee
> 
> Dif-tor heh smusma: Live long and prosper
> 
> Sochya eh dif: Peace and long life
> 
> Tela'at: Honoured elder (usually one who's gone through Kolinahr but shhhh Prime Spock could never)
> 
> Kevet-dutar: Ambassador
> 
> Ni'droi'ik nar-tor: Forgive me
> 
> Yel-tasu: Astronomer (I made up some constellations)
> 
> Hassu: Doctor
> 
> Ashayam: Beloved
> 
> I am now the kind of person who has to include a Vulcan language glossary in their author's note. This is the 2018 I personally deserve.
> 
> I love Kirk Prime/Spock Prime more than most things. That's the sum total of my motivation to write this fic.
> 
> Okay, that's a lie. It's actually all Magali's fault and she and I have spent the past 24 hours saying HEINOUS things about the Star Trek canon that may emerge into the light of AO3 at some future point, when I have less of a shame reflex.
> 
> In case you were wondering: Jim fell into the Nexus and the Nexus made a full neural net copy of his consciousness and then spat him out into the AOS timeline and that's that on that.
> 
> As Magali says, ''stay tuned for the crack AU where they travel thru space and time to reassemble enterprise prime and then have adventures".
> 
> Title is from 'Genesis 3:23' by The Mountain Goats.
> 
> HMU on twitter/tumblr @dotsayers! I don't always talk about Star Trek, but when I do, I'm really fucking into it.


End file.
